Chapter 67

Bring Me My Bow of Burning Gold...

Something had gone horribly, horribly wrong, and Qeteb knew it the instant the blood splattered out from Katie's throat.

He had gutted the wrong girl. DragonStar had chosen correctly.

But how could this be so when his captains had won, three to two?

They had won, hadn't they?

Or was there something he'd misinterpreted?

Tencendor took one last, dying breath, and the devastation of death consumed the land as the last of Katie's blood flowed from her tiny, frail body.

The sky cracked.

The earth shattered.

The air exploded.

Qeteb threw Katie's drained corpse to one side. "Then it's just you and me," he said, calm now in the face of disaster, "as it ever was."

"As it ever was," DragonStar agreed.

Qeteb, blank-faced, stepped away, vanishing into the shadowy land beyond the encircling columns of the mausoleum. The silent, dark forms of Mot, Barzula and Sheol vanished directly after him.

DragonStar took Faraday — now deep in shock — and led

her unresisting to one side, sitting her down against one of the columns. "Wait," he said. "All will be well."

Axis, as everyone in the column, panicked as Creation withered about them.

Firestorms raced across the plains, and mountains trembled and collapsed in upon themselves.

The darkness and coldness of a complete vacuum descended upon the land.

Wait, a voice echoed through the minds of all within the convoy, and they knew it for the voice of Leagh's Child, all will be well.

And even though darkness consumed them, and the feel of the land beneath their feet vanished, all continued to survive.

All that remained of the land that had once been Tencendor was the black pulsing thing that was the Maze: an island of madness in a sea of destruction.

DragonStar straightened, and whistled.

The baying of the Alaunt filled the air, and their creamy, eager bodies wound about his legs.

A shadow darkened the doorway of the mausoleum.

"At your service, sir," said Raspu, dressed for the destruction of Creation in his stiffly starched butler's uniform, "as always."

DragonStar nodded. "Good." He held out his hand. "Deliver me my bow."

And Raspu inclined his head, and stepped forward. In his hands he held the Wolven, and its quiver of blue-fletched arrows.

DragonStar took the bow, and slung the quiver over his shoulder and back.

He held out the bow, and looked at the lizard.

The lizard grinned and, lifting a claw, sent a shaft of light glimmering along the entire bow.

It burst into fire, although the flames did not consume the wood, nor harm DragonStar.

DragonStar nodded at the lizard, then slung the burning bow over his shoulder.

Then he lifted his voice, and sent it singing through the Maze.

"Run, Qeteb," he said, "for the clouds are about to unfold, and the Hunt about to begin."